Is someone willing to help?

[tycanis]

I have decided it is time to help myself but could really use some assistance.  My current job is draining me quickly.  I travel 75% of the time with many trips being out of state for the whole week.  With a 2 year old at home and another on the way I am looking to try and move on.  If I can stay with the company I will but if nothing else I want to develop some alternative income so I can put away as much as possible to take a step down, if necessary, or move on to a lower income job without too big of an impact. 

To get to the point I would like to get into web development or some other type of programming.  I do some programming now for my current job, even though it is not in my job description, but do not know where to really get started and 'break into' this on my own.  I would greatly appreciate any and all advise.  This forum is full of a lot of great people that seem willing to help each other out.  This is me asking...

[toby2]

Sorry to hear that you're struggling with your job. I have been there before, traveling 4-5 days a week - it's not fun. I also have a two year old so I can relate.

There seem to be a lot of avenues to get into web development these days. There are a lot of MOOCs that can teach you the fundamentals (search Coursera, EdX, Udacity), but you need a lot of self-discipline for these types of courses. They're also a bit more on the academic side so it might not necessarily translate directly into a paid position.

If you're looking for something a little more intensive, you might want to look at coding-specific school like General Assembly, Thinkful, AppAcademy and places like that. There are tons more that I can't recall off the top of my head. I can't vouch for the job placement rate for these places or anything, but these companies are focused entirely on getting people jobs in web development.